Sourdough rises in a blue house
There’s a blue house in Ringgold that, if you’re passing by, will smell delicious. Last year, a room in the house officially became Blue House Bakery.
Lynda Uren had been baking sour dough bread for 15 years with a starter her husband’s cousin gave her. “I’d feed the starter every three days,” she says, “and pretty soon I had more bread than we could eat.”
That’s when her husband, Dewayne, started toting bread in his truck on his tool sales route. Before long, orders were coming in — for bread and tools.
Things went along that way for a quite a while. One day, Dewayne said to his wife, “This isn’t a hobby — it’s a business.”
The Urens converted a room in their home to a second kitchen, equipped it according to state standards, including a three-bay sink and a separate hand-washing sink, and sought official
certification.
Lynda is the baker. Does her husband help? “Not really,” she says. “Yes I do,” he retorts, “I do dishes.” With Lynda putting in 30 hours a week producing breads and pastries, there are plenty of dishes to do. She admits her husband also helps her set up at fairs and markets.
Over the past year, they’ve had booths at the Ringgold Duck Race, the Catoosa Market, and Lynda and her daughter Jodi regularly set up at Battlefield Farmer’s Market in Rock Springs.
Blue House Bakery breads and desserts are sold at Lilly’s Produce in Fort Oglethorpe and at Homemade With Heart in Rossville, and the bakery has donated sourdough cinnamon roll packages for fundraisers to help local youth. Blue House can also fill special orders.
“My sour dough cinnamon rolls are the most popular of my products,” says Lynda. Other products produced at Blue House Bakery include sour dough cinnamon swirl bread, cream cheese muffins, baked hand pies (small pies you can hold in your hand) filled with apples, cherries, blueberries or peaches, full-size pecan pies and a variety of cookies, including thumbprint cookies.
And there’s Baklava, a Greek pastry made with phyllo dough, filled with nutmeat, and drizzled with a secretrecipe sauce.
Lynda started baking in home-ec class at her Michigan high school. Thirty years ago, she and her husband moved south with their young son and daughter to be near Dewayne’s mother, who was growing older. They’ve now been married 46 years and have three grandchildren.
“We go back to Michigan every year to see my parents,” says Lynda, “and to go snowmobiling in the upper peninsula.”
Then it’s back home to bake some more. Before baking, Lynda’s hobbies were sewing and knitting. “I made clothes, drapes for my houses,” she says, “but my hands aren’t up to that anymore.”
Lynda likes to try new recipes. “Sometimes they work out, sometimes not.” She recently started making a hand pie using Splenda instead of sugar. She says her sour dough bread, though it has some sugar in it, has no negative impact on her diabetic husband’s sugar levels. But muffins with fruit in them didn’t work out so well, she says. Other baked goods she’s added to her line include a variety of quick breads including banana nut, pumpkin, zucchini, and piña colada bread.
What’s the best part of all this baking? “People are happy when they eat it,” says Lynda, “because it’s yummy.”
Blue House Bakery products can be found at the places mentioned in the article or ordered by calling Lynda Uren at 423-902-1186.